Maybe I shouldn’t presume people know the term noir. And since the term has been used to describe a variety different sorts of literature and film, I’ll try to give a coherent if simplified definition .

In a pure sense, noir presents a dark attitude toward both the world the story inhabits (in film this may appear as dark or drab colors) and toward the human condition (represented by a characters whose bad choices lead to perdition or ruin.) A few favorites of mine: James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jim Thomson’s The Grifters, Charles Willeford’s Pickup, and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley.

Detective stories from the ‘30s and ‘40s and more recent ones that evolved out of the hardboiled tradition are often labeled noir, as they share a world view with the above, only instead of the protagonist being the tragic character, the protagonist is the detective who heroically though futilely attempts to bring at least a morsel of justice to a corrupt and perilous world. Some favorites of mine are Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Ross MacDonald’s The Underground Man, Touch of Evil, by Robert Wade and William Miller, and the film Chinatown.

One remarkable aspect of No Country for Old Men (see my earlier blogging on the film) is that it combines the two kinds of noir described above, with Josh Brolin’s character finding a bag of money and making a tragic choice and Tommy Lee Jones’ character fulfilling the noir detective role.